Studies of microbial recovery from stainless steel surfaces

In microbiological environmental monitoring programs, swabs are widely used for monitoring of surfaces and operators contamination. Considering that cleaning methods are developed and validated to prevent the risk of producing contaminated products by confirming that the cleaning process is sufficient, it is important to establish method limits and select the proper cleaning techniques and detection methods. The present study comparatively evaluated the recovery capacity from samples surfaces precontaminated with Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027, Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633, Candida albicans ATCC 10231 using the swab and contact plates methods as well as the logarithmic reduction of microbial charge after the treatment of pre-inoculated stainless steel plates with chitosan solution 10mg/mL in 1M acetic acid.